Elections in Andalusia, a crucial test for Pedro Sánchez’s government in Spain

Andalusia, Spain’s most populous region, votes this Sunday to elect a new regional government.

These are elections that are considered crucial because its result could anticipate the scenario that the Spaniards would face in the general electionsexpected for next year.

Although there is no shortage of rumors that, the friction between the partners of the PSOE-Podemos coalition government could bring forward the call to the polls by the end of this year.

More than 6.6 million Andalusians will be able to vote on 19 June to elect the 109 parliamentarians who will hold the 12th legislature in that region.

These are elections that the current president of the Andalusian government and candidate of the People’s Party (PP), Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, has advanced trying to improve the results that made him president in 2018, albeit with some nuances: without having won the elections , in coalition with the liberals of Ciudadanos and with the parliamentary support of the deputies of Vox, the far-right party that continues to grow in Spain.

Not too motivated, the Andalusians dream of a government that stops unemployment, one of the highest in the country.

A survey by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) – an autonomous body that depends on the Ministry of the Presidency – indicates that 62 percent of Andalusians believe that unemployment is one of the three most important problems in Andalusia.

forecasts

The polls sweeten the ears of Moreno Bonilla, an almost unknown politician when he ran four years ago and who could renew his mandate – the polls give him 36.6 percent of his fine – with a prediction that it will add more votes than the entire left.

And although he aspires to achieve a majority that allows him to govern alone, and for which he should be able to surpass the 55 deputies of his party in Parliament, he would need the support of Vox, who, for now, is only willing to give it. in exchange for joining the government.

“If he needs only one Vox seat, one abstention, he will not be president if Vox is not in government,” Macarena Olona, ​​candidate of the far-right party, warned Moreno Bonilla.

The strategy of the PSOE

Juan Espadas, the PSOE candidate that President Pedro Sánchez supported in the primaries against his longtime rival within the party, Susana Díaz, strives to play a worthy role and get no fewer than 33 socialist deputies to sit in Parliament, the lowest figure in the history of the PSOE in Andalusia.

“Andalusia was a stronghold of the PSOE. We have had four decades of socialist rule. And even when Moreno Bonilla rules with Ciudadanos in this legislature, the previous elections were won by the PSOE (by number of votes, which does not guarantee sufficient parliamentary support to form a government) “, he says. Clarione Antonio Conde Argudo, president of the Association of Political Scientists of Andalusia.

Ciudadanos, the party that today occupies the vice-presidency in the coalition government with the PP, could achieve such modest results that it is not unthinkable that it will disappear from the Andalusian parliament, according to some forecasts.

The Por Andalucía formation, the union of several parties, from which Podemos was excluded due to delay in the registration deadline, presents as a candidate Inmaculada Nieto, of Izquierda Unida, joined by Más País – a split from the Podemos of Pablo Iglesias- , Equo and the Andalusian popular initiative.

The local party, Adelante Andalucía, whose candidate is Teresa Rodríguez, would also lose its parliamentary presence.

political negotiations

The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, does not hide his strategy: if the PP is first in the votes, he has proposed to the PSOE to facilitate the formation of governments in those autonomies and municipalities in which he wins in the next elections in exchange for abstention to vote for the election of the future president of Andalusia, if the PP is first to vote. The maneuver aims at not having to rely on Vox to anoint Moreno Bonilla as president again.

“There is an enhancement of the figure of the PP candidate as a moderate person who somewhat hides the acronym of the party itself. There is a tendency of the PP to the moderate center-right and it moves away from the vote that the far right of Vox draws -thinks Conde Argudo-. He realized that he cannot stay in that niche of votes and went to that moderate center asking for the vote of the Socialist Party’s discontent ”.

According to the political scientist, “this will be extrapolated at the national level. They will try to capture the center-right vote, which was a vote of discontent against the Socialist Party and the Popular Party itself. The PP will try to attract him again ”.

Polls predict Vox growthwhich would reach around 18 per cent of the votes, which would allow him to add eight more deputies than he obtained in 2018.

About 20 percent of the electorate has not yet decided their vote for this Sunday. Y the ghost of abstention -in Spain elections are not compulsory- he grows.

“The vote by correspondence has increased but there is a great disaffection and not only on the part of the Andalusian citizens”, says Conde Argudo.

Correos, the postal body that sends ballot papers to citizens who ask to vote remotely, has received almost 180,000 requests, a figure which implies a 98 percent increase as for the Andalusians who requested it in the last regional elections of 2018.

Unemployment

“We participated in the events of the electoral campaign of the main parties and the militancy itself has dropped. They have not been able to attract a mass influx to these events. This is a paradigm of disaffection and the little illusion that militancy has ”, adds the political scientist and underlines the issue that keeps Andalusians awake: lack of work.

“The province with the highest number of unemployed in Spain is in Cadiz,” says Conde Argudo.

According to data from the Spanish National Statistics Institute, eight of the ten cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants with the most unemployed in Spain are located in Andalusia.

With these early elections, Andalusia satisfies a decade of governments that are not finished. Three electoral advances: in 2015, in 2018 and this Sunday.

Madrid, correspondent

CB